[Japanese defenses threatened] to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not a recipe for victory.

Major General Charles Willoughby, G-2 (chief of intelligence) on General MacArthur’s staff, on the buildup of Japanese forces in the zone of the planned Operation Olympic assault.[ ]

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature — after the recipe for making eels from flour — is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried the impossibility. If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

This belief, that Darwinian evolution is "random", is not merely false. It is the exact opposite of the truth. Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially non -random.

Inside any vigorexic queen, any muscle queen, any macho queen, any aloof queen, any of us, ultra-masculine gays, there's a flaming faggot fighting to come out. When we finally let her blossom, she'll be so busy chatting with the other internalized flaming faggots, that we'll finally be able to sexually enjoy the boring sexual macho that we all also carry inside us. Versatility, darlings, that's the recipe for success in bed (well, having a bed can also help).

Elder ladies, up earlier, had coffee before; For themselves they've prepared now a tasty encore, A concoction from heated, with cream thickened, beer, In which curds, densely floating, of cream cheese appear. For men there's a choice of smoked meats on a platter: There is tongue , savouries, sausage , and half-geese well fattened, All first-rate, all by secret house recipe cured, Long in juniper smoke in the chimney matured, At the end, as the last course, 'zrazy' were served. Thuswise was in the Judge's house breakfast observed.

Book Two, The Castle

Here in the hospital, I say,that is not my body, not my body.I am not here for the doctorsto read like a recipe.

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.

As a teacher, I have seen time and again a certain kind of American middle-class girl who projects winsome malleability, a soft, unfocused help-me-please persona that, in adult life, is a recipe for disaster. These are the ones who end up with a string of abusive boyfriends or in sticky situations with overfamiliar male authority figures who call them “honey.”

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one. What is most repellent in the System of Nature after the recipe for making eels from flour is the audacity with which it decides that there is no God, without even having tried the impossibility. If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

Voltaire, in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770)